Re: [tied] Re: Historical implications...

Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

> 15-06-03 23:14, alex wrote:
>
> generalisation less Slavic or is there an another explanation for
> slavic "sv-"?
> Every language has its own phonotactic constraints. Obligatory
> regressive voicing assimilation between adjacent obstruents (e.g. zk
> --> sk, sd --> zd) is a very common phenomenon, and can be observed
> in nearly all modern Slavic languages (except Ukrainian, where the
> rules are a little different). However, *v was originally a semivowel
> ([w]) without a voiceless conterpart, which means that it was not
> _distinctively_ voiced and did not cause the voicing of a preceding
> consonant. As a result, Slavic *sv-, *tv-, *kv- were retained, and
> when *v was strengthened into a fricative ([v]), as it was in most of
> Slavic, some Slavic dialects (e.g. Russian or Czech) came to
> pronounce these clusters as [sv], [tv], [kv], while others (including
> my variety of Polish) devoiced the second fricative: [sf], [tf],
> [kf]. In Romanian, [sf] was phonetically the most faithful rendering
> of Slavic [sv] or [sf] that was pronounceable in terms of Romanian
> phonology.
>
> Piotr
>
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Thank you for the explanation for slavic development. I seen the
rendering in Rom. in the same manner as I wrote:
"Thus , the slavic "sve~tU" could be represented just as "sfentu"
"sfânt". "

It remains to clarify some points:

1) which is the supposed period of time as the more velar version of
Slavic "w" became fricative?
2) which is the etymology of Slavic "sve~ntu" ?
3) when in South Slavic the group "*sUv-" became "zv-"?


alex